Cards and applications such as Bizum have become one of the favorite payment methods for more and more people, for many cash has been in the background. However, banknotes and coins are still essential in our country, since physical currency was the most frequently used means of payment throughout 2022surpassing the card and mobile devices, according to the “Study on habits in the use of cash 2022” published by the Bank of Spain (BdE).
Such is the eagerness of the Spanish for cash, that it is not surprising that it is also popular among criminals, trying to sneak into circulation both counterfeit bills and coins, deceiving the most vulnerable.
As a general rule, banknotes tend to be the main objective of fraudsters, although these are not the only ones that suffer counterfeiting, since coins are also in the crosshairs of these criminals. In this sense, in 2022, 26,175 counterfeit coins in circulation for a value of 49,472 euros, according to data from the Bank of Spain. However, the possibility of finding one of these coins in our portfolio is remote, since only six coins are false for every million in circulation.
But what is the most counterfeited currency? The two-euro one is the one that has received the most attention from criminals for years, since it since 2016, 238,733 of these coins have been counterfeited. On the other hand, in the case of the one euro and 50 cent coins, a much smaller number has been counterfeited from 2016 to 2022, amounting to 7,586 and 6,334 coins respectively, in this seven-year period.
Fake two euro coins in circulation
In the year 2022 they were 23,838 counterfeit two-euro coins detected in Spain for a value of 47,676 euros, 91% of all counterfeit coins, according to BdE data. However, in recent years this has not been the largest number recorded, but in 2018 it was chosen by criminals to introduce numerous counterfeit coins into circulation, since the Bank of Spain detected 48,031 two-euro coins worth 96,062 euros, twice as much as in the last year.
One of the most widespread scams by fraudsters has been put into circulation a foreign currency, specifically the Turkish lira, as if it were a two-euro coin. In this case, its value is much lower than the two-euro coin, since it barely exceeds 30 cents, so its value is 6 times less than the European currency. This is a type of fraud that is based on the “cambiazo”, since these currencies are exchanged for others from outside the European Union due to their enormous similarity.